Friday, May 1, 2015

Medamulana hooligans abuse Dr. Nirmal in raw filth ‘you are the bas….d who chased away our Mahinda mahathaya’, and attack brutally

(Lanka-e-News- 01.MAy.2015, 11.00PM) Some supporters of ex president Mahinda Rajapakse who by now has become the most infamously famous corrupt barbaric president who ruled Sri Lanka attacked Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri, the media spokesman of the University Dons federation, and another University Don (who did not wish to reveal his name ), while accusing him and scolding in raw filth, “you are the bas……d who chased away our ‘Mahinda mahathaya’ “

This brutal attack was launched while the Rajapakse villainous slaves at their May day rally (today) held at Kirulapone. Both the victims are now being treated at the accident ward of the Colombo general hospital. Dr. Nirmal’s neck had been injured.

Dr. Nirmal and his friend have attended the rally and while they were among the crowd like others , the Rajapakse slavish hooligans have started moving hither and thither looking at them. The victims have realized they were in for trouble. However they had stood back to listen to what Wimal Weerawansa was saying in his speech at that moment.

At that stage , the Rajapakse slavish goons have suddenly set upon Dr. Nirmal and attacked him shouting ‘you are the bas…..d who chased away our Mahinda Mahathaya.’ When Dr. Nirmal fell down , the group had begun fiercely assaulting him. The other Don who was with him had tried to rescue his friend when these Rajapakse slavish goons who are never in short supply had attacked him also.

The police officers who were in the vicinity had intervened and taken Dr. Nirmal into their jeep ,when these Rajapakse nursed and nurtured slavish goons have assaulted the police and damaged the police jeep, while shouting, ‘set fire to the jeep with that fellow inside ‘ However the police had managed to take the victims to the Colombo general hospital. Dr. Nirmal was admitted to the accident unit.

When a complaint was made to the Kirilapone police , and when it was being recorded , the notorious political turncoat and people’s discard Vasudeva Nanayakkara the decrepit , noted for crapping everywhere he goes despite being a lawyer had visited the police station and has sought to save the assailants. Vasudeva told the police that one of those involved in the attack informed him , thereby betraying that he knows the assailants.

Mahinda Rajapakse who while in power stoked violence , murder and mayhem and became a byword for brutality , after being booted out is now clearly manifesting his true image and bestial colors to the people. When Mahinda Rajapakse met his waterloo in January and went to Medamulana, his supporters asked ‘why did n’t you cling on to power even by killing ?’ The present violent and hooligan behavior only bears testimony to the fact that Rajapakse and his supporters are in the ready to again plunge the country into chaos, commotion and confusion come what may

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by (2015-05-01 19:24:04)

Abuse Of ‘Sports Law’ May Ruin Rugby

By Marlon Dale Ferreira –May 1, 2015

Marlon Dale Ferreira

The entire Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union barring Group Captain Hon.Secretary Nalin De Silva were served letters that they cannot contest the up coming Annual General Meeting by K.D.S.Ruwanchandra the Deputy General of the Ministry of Sports in a letter dated the 25th of April 2015.The President of the SLRFU Asanga Seneviratne speaking to this columnist went on to reveal that all the hard work done to uplift the sport of rugby may now be in jeopardy with this decision that perhaps the Sports Minister should consider in reviewing.

The only exception made to this Sports Ministry decision is where Group Captain Nalin De Silva the current Hon. Secretary of the SLRFU is the only one who has been granted permission to contest. De Silva has already served 3 years as Secretary of the SLRFU as has Asanga Seneviratne as President and Lasitha Gunaratne as Vice President. Allowing De Silva to contest and not Seneviratne and Gunaratne could be viewed as the epitome of discrimination!

May 1, 2015

K.D.S. Ruwanchandra the Deputy General of the Ministry of Sports has officially served a letters to the Executive Committee of the Sri Lanka Rugby Football Union(SLRFU) headed by Asanga Seneviratneinforming almost all of them that they cannot contest the scheduled ‘Annual General Meeting’ which is due to be held shortly. “Surprisingly no reason has been given for the disqualification!” Seneviratne told ‘Colombo Telegraph”.

Asanga Seneviratne with Mahinda Rajapaksa

“This letter comes from a directive given by the Minister of SportNavin Dissanayake who now appears to be more on a sporting ‘witch hunt’ going on to do whatever it takes to wipe out anyone who was deemed to have any close ties with the former Rajapaksa regime, even if it means that the now experienced steady growth of rugby football both locally and internationally is to be stopped dead in its tracks. If this is not truly an example of one ‘cutting his nose to spite his face’ then that idiom may have to find another definition.” said a former rugby player who did not wish to be identified.

It is well known fact that Asanga Seneviratne is a close associate of the Rajapaksa family.

The only exception made here is where Group Captain Nalin De Silva the current Secretary of the SLRFU is the only one who has been granted permission to contest. De Silva has already served 3 years as Secretary of the SLRFU as has Seneviratne as President and Gunaratne as Vice President. “Allowing De Silva to contest and not Seneviratne and Gunaratne is the epitome of discrimination” the former rugby player further said. Read More

Thousands still missing after Nepal quake

KATHMANDU | BY RUPAM JAIN NAIR AND SANJEEV MIGLANI- Fri May 1, 2015

(Reuters) - Thousands of people were still missing in Nepal on Friday as food and help began to trickle through to those stranded in remote areas after last week's earthquake which killed 6,250.

Up to 1,000 Europeans are still unaccounted for, mostly around popular trekking routes, the head of the European Union (EU) delegation in Nepal said.

"We don't know where they are, or they could be," Ambassador Rensje Teerink told reporters. Officials said it was hard to trace the missing because many backpackers do not register with their embassies.

"It does not mean that they are buried. They could have left the country without telling anyone before the earthquake struck," Teerink said Reuters.

Nepal's home ministry said it had not been informed that the number of EU citizens missing after Saturday's earthquake could be as high as 1,000.

"If that is the case then why are the embassies not informing us? Why have they not contacted the Nepal government?" home ministry spokesman Laxmi Prasad Dhakal told Reuters.

The number of people unaccounted for from France, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands is 371 according to checks Reuters made with their governments, while all Irish citizens, Croatians and Romanians have been traced. Other European nations are yet to provide an updated figure on how many of their citizens are unaccounted for.

Bodies are still being pulled from the debris of ruined buildings, while rescue workers have not been able to reach some remote areas.

The government put the number of injured at more than 14,350.

In the capital Kathmandu, many unclaimed bodies were being quickly cremated because of the need to avert disease and reduce the stench of corpses in areas where buildings had collapsed.

Many of the dead could be migrant workers from neighboring India, local officials said.

"Morgues are full beyond capacity and we have been given instructions to incinerate bodies immediately after they are pulled out," said Raman Lal, an Indian paramilitary force official working in coordination with Nepali forces.

Aid was slowly reaching remote towns and villages nestled in the Himalayan mountains and foothills of the impoverished nation. But government officials said efforts to step up the pace of delivery were frustrated by a shortage of supply trucks and drivers, many of whom had returned to their villages to help their families.

"Our granaries are full and we have ample food stock, but we are not able to transport supplies at a faster pace," said Shrimani Raj Khanal, a manager at the Nepal Food Corp.

Army helicopters have air-dropped instant noodles and biscuits to remote communities but people need rice and other ingredients to cook a proper meal, he said.

Many Nepalis have been sleeping in the open since the 7.8 magnitude quake, with survivors afraid to return to their homes because of powerful aftershocks. According to the United Nations, 600,000 houses have been destroyed or damaged.

Information Minister Minendra Rijal said the government would provide $1,000 in immediate assistance to the families of those killed, as well as $400 for cremation or burial.

The U.N. said 8 million of Nepal's 28 million people were affected, with at least 2 million needing tents, water, food and medicines over the next three months.

UNPRECEDENTED DAMAGE

Finance Minister Ram Sharan Mahat said Nepal would need at least $2 billion to rebuild homes, hospitals, government offices and historic buildings and appealed for international backing.

"This is just an initial estimate and it will take time to assess the extent of damage and calculate the cost of rebuilding," Mahat told Reuters.

Prime Minister Sushil Koirala told Reuters earlier this week the death toll from the quake could reach 10,000.

That would surpass the 8,500 who died in a 1934 earthquake, the last disaster on this scale to hit the nation sandwiched between India and China.

Home ministry spokesman Dhakal said that though the 1934 quake was more powerful, fewer people lived in the Kathmandu valley then.

"The scale of reconstruction will be unprecedented," Dhakal said.

While international aid has poured in, some Nepalis have accused the government of being too slow to distribute it.

"There have been cases where villages have pelted stones on trucks carrying aid and food supplies. They must have been really hungry and angry to do so," said Purna Shanker, who works at the government's commodity trading office.

In Sundarkhula, a village close to the quake's epicenter west of Kathmandu, villagers said they were searching their destroyed homes for food.

Bharat Regmi, 28, said he jumped out of the first floor as the quake lifted his house from its foundations. When he went back a few days later, he and two of his friends found a bag of potatoes in the rubble.

"We are living on water and whatever we can dig out from the house," he said, standing under steady rain near the highway to Kathmandu. Later, he crept back under a thin orange sheet, shared with about a dozen other villagers.

Tensions have also flared between foreigners and Nepalis desperate to be evacuated.

In the Himalayas, climbing is set to reopen on Mount Everest next week after damage caused by avalanches is repaired, although many have abandoned their ascents.

An avalanche killed 18 climbers and sherpa mountain guides at the Everest base camp.

(Additional reporting by Andrew MacAskill and Tommy Wilkes in New Delhi; Gopal Sharma, Ross Adkin, Frank Jack Daniel, Andrew Marshall, Adnan Abidi and Christophe Van Der Perre in Nepal; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan/Ruth Pitchford)

Six Baltimore officers charged in Gray’s death

State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby said Friday that a medical examiner had ruled Gray’s death a homicide.

By Lynh Bui and Dana Hedgpeth-May 1

BALTIMORE —Six Baltimore police officers have been charged with several counts, including one who was charged with second-degree murder, in the high-profile death of Freddie Gray, who died from injuries suffered in police custody, State’s Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby said Friday.

Mosby said warrants have been issued for the arrest of the officers, including a lieutenant and a sergeant. Gray suffered a spinal injury after he was arrested April 12 and died after riding in a police transport van that made several stops.

Marilyn Mosby Baltimore City state’s attorney, says city police officers involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray will face criminal charges, including homicide. (Reuters)

Six Baltimore officers charged in Gray’s death.odt by Thavam Ratna

Rohingya deaths: String of mass graves stretches from Burma to Thailand

Rohingya refugees sit in a boat as they are intercepted by Thai authorities. Many of those fleeing from Burma never make it ashore. Pic: AP

A buried skeleton, uncovered at the Thai border jungle camp today

Photo by Maikom Sadao Rescue

By Francis Wade May 01, 2015

The discovery of dozens of Rohingya bodies at a human trafficking camp in southern Thailand serves as a reminder that along the nearly 1,000-kilometer refugee passage from western Burma to southern Thailand lies a string of mass graves, both onshore and offshore, occupied by a single ethnic group. In its coverage of the discovery today, the Phuketwan newspaper carried testimony of a 15-year-old boy who, aboard a smugglers’ boat somewhere off the coast of Thailand or Malaysia, watched 34 trafficked Rohingya being thrown overboard. That sort of story is repeated countless times elsewhere—of mass drownings, of thecasual dispensing of refugees by traffickers.

Before the Thailand government moves to condemn the brutalization of smuggled Rohingya, it’s worth remembering how its own officials have aided and profited from a trade suspected to be worth up to $250 million annually. With the rising profits has also come a greater sophistication in the trade: the boy who watched fellow travelers being pitched into the ocean said he only managed to survive because his boat had a desalination plant that supplied fresh water to his and other vessels carrying trafficked Rohingya. As Phuketwan notes, the clampdowns on onshore trafficking sites have moved the industry further “offshore”, and onto floating camps where the smugglers’ bounty is held until the next link in the trafficking chain running from Burma (Myanmar) to Thailand is ready to take them. Until demand is curtailed, traffickers will keep coming up with new ways to ensure the industry stays afloat.

It’s a depressing illustration of how a people who were dehumanised at home decided to flee, only to become, along the route, commoditized, and when their profitability waned, were rendered dispensable. One man kept in a jungle camp in southern Thailand had an $1,800 price tag placed on him. “As the smugglers beat Sabur in their jungle hide-out, they kept a phone line open so that his relatives could hear his screams and speed up payment of $1,800 to secure his release,” Reuters reported in 2013.

When they can no longer be bought—perhaps because prolonged torture by traffickers in camps means they are unable to work—they become a burden, and will most likely be killed. For traffickers, the moral inhibitions that would guard against cruel treatment diminish every time new articles of trade come ashore. The complicity of Thai officials makes this practice appear, in their eyes, all the more “okay”.

At every stage in the trade there exists a facilitating mechanism that keeps Rohingya crossing the ocean. In western Burma, the government and local Rakhine community makes their lives simply untenable, so they flee, thus making the Burmese government a key player in the supply end of the chain. Perhaps they’ll go to Bangladesh, where only around 27,000 can live in official UN accommodation, and the other 300,000 or so in squalid camps. So they may flee again, lured by the smugglers’ promises of work in Malaysia—a Muslim majority country where they believe they’ll find sanctuary. It may be only several days into the crossing that, as fellow travelers fall ill and are pitched overboard, they begin to realize the duplicity that underpins the trade, and which illustrates that wherever they go—home or abroad—they are essentially expendable. The demand side—from the fishing trawlers where many end up in indentured labour, to wealthy husbands looking for a bride—feeds directly off their persecution in Burma. For them, and for the third parties in Thai officialdom, Rohingya disenfranchisement is highly profitable, and will continue to be so. As long as this remains the case, the mass graves will grow.

French soldiers accused of raping CAR children

President Hollande vows to show "no mercy" if troops are found guilty of abusing children they were sent to protect.

"The children were saying that they were hungry and they thought that they could get some food from the soldiers. The answer was 'if you do this, then I will give you food'."

Paula Donovan, AIDS-Free World

30 Apr 2015
France is investigating allegations that its peacekeepers sexually abused children in the Central African Republic after a leaked UN report said victims as young as eight were raped in exchange for food and money.

The French government "was made aware at the end of July 2014 by the UN's high commissioner for human rights of accusations by children that they had been sexually abused by French soldiers", the defence ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.

An investigation was opened shortly after by Paris prosecutors, it said.

French President Francois Hollande vowed to "show no mercy" if the troops were found guilty.

"If some soldiers have behaved badly, I will show no mercy," he told reporters.

The abuse was alleged by around 10 children, the ministry said, and reportedly took place at a centre for displaced people near the airport of the capital Bangui between December 2013 and June 2014.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq confirmed that UN rights investigators had conducted a probe last year following "serious allegations" of child abuse and sexual exploitation by French troops, and had suspended a staff member for leaking the report in July.

The report was given to Britain's The Guardian newspaper by the US-based advocacy group AIDS-Free World, which is calling for a commission of inquiry to be set up on sexual misconduct by peacekeepers.

Al Jazeera's Diplomatic Editor James Bays, reporting from the UN headquarters in New York, said that even though the French military said an investigation was under way on their behalf, the incident is potentially embarrassing for the UN.

"Until now, the one person who has been punished for anything is that UN human rights official who raised the alarm," he said.

Children searching for food

Paula Donovan, co-director of AIDS-Free World, said the report detailed interviews with six children, aged eight to 15, who approached the French soldiers to ask for food.

"The children were saying that they were hungry and they thought that they could get some food from the soldiers. The answer was 'if you do this, then I will give you food'," Donovan told AFP news agency.

"Different kids used different language."

The report by the UN human rights office was commissioned amid fears of sexual abuse against children last year as tens of thousands were displaced by fighting and unrest in the country.

The UN employee accused of the leak, Swedish national Anders Kompass, is based in Geneva and turned the report over to French authorities because his bosses had failed to take action, The Guardian reported.

He has been suspended and faces dismissal for breaching protocol, the paper said.

But UN officials said Kompass passed on the confidential document before it was presented to senior officials in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, suggesting that senior UN officials were not even aware of the report's findings when it was leaked.

"This constitutes a serious breach of protocol, which, as is well known to all OHCHR officials, requires redaction of any information that could endanger victims, witnesses and investigators," said Haq.

While the UN did not identify the source of the leak, it asserted that "such conduct does not constitute whistleblowing".

Afghan delegation heads to Qatar for talks with the Taliban

Scheduled meeting also involves representatives from Pakistan and would mark significant step towards opening formal talks to ending conflict in Afghanistan

Afghan soldiers fire artillery during a battle with Taliban insurgents in Kunduz, north Afghanistan, on Wednesday. Photograph: Reuters

Reuters in Kabul-Friday 1 May 2015 15

An Afghan government delegation is heading to Qatar for “open discussions” with representatives of the Taliban aimed at ending Afghanistan’s long war, officials have said.

The scheduled meeting would mark a significant step towards opening formal talks to ending the conflict, but it is unclear whether the insurgents’ supreme leader, Mullah Omar, has approved them.

Pakistan’s army chief told the Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, in February that senior Taliban figures were open to direct talks with Kabul but until now there had been little sign of progress.

The 20-member Afghan delegation will attend preliminary talks scheduled for Sunday and Monday, said Attaullah Ludin, deputy chief of the Afghanistan High Peace Council.

“There will be representatives from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Taliban and some other organisations,” he said on Friday.

Ludin added that council members would be meeting the Taliban as wells two representatives of Hizb-i-Islami, another militant group fighting the US-backed Afghan government that also has a political wing.

A senior Taliban official in Qatar confirmed that a meeting was set for the next few days and that Hizb-i-Islami would participate. “It’s top secret so far,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

At Ethnic Summit, UWSA Backs Rebels in Conflict With Govt

Aung Myint, a United Wa State Army spokesman, delivers opening remarks at an ethnic summit in Panghsang, Wa Special Region, on Friday. (Photo: JPaing / The Irrawaddy)

By LAWI WENG / THE IRRAWADDY|-Friday, May 1, 2015

PANGHSANG, Wa Special Region — The United Wa State Army (UWSA) has a relationship akin to “a jaw and its teeth” with a trio of ethnic armed groups engaged in active hostilities with the Burma Army, its leadership said at the opening of a conference of ethnic leaders here on Friday.

The solidarity pledge between the UWSA and the three other ethnic groups, who are attending the summit against the government’s wishes, illustrated just how far Burma may be from a nationwide ceasefire agreement that Naypyidaw has said is on the horizon.

Palaung, Arakanese and Kokang armed rebels have continued to clash with government troops in recent weeks, even as momentum has appeared to build toward the signing of a nationwide peace accord. The 16-member Nationwide Ceasefire Coordinating Team (NCCT) that has negotiated that agreement does not include the UWSA, which made clear on Friday that it would not abide a selectively applied definition of peace in Burma.

“We invited to this meeting our brotherhood of ethnic armed groups who are in ongoing fighting [with the Burma Army]. We are like a jaw and its teeth, which cannot be divided,” said Aung Myint, a spokesman who was reading a statement on behalf of UWSA chairman Bao Youxiang.

Only a complete cessation of hostilities between the Burma Army and ethnic rebel groups would legitimize the government’s long-sought nationwide ceasefire agreement, Aung Myint said.

“Unless fighting stops in the whole of the country, a nationwide peace agreement is just a piece of paper.”

The UWSA, Burma’s largest ethnic armed group with a fighting force estimated at 20,000 soldiers, reached a ceasefire with the government in 1989 and renewed the accord in September 2011 as President Thein Sein jumpstarted peace negotiations with ethnic armed groups nationwide.

At what he termed a “confusing” time in Burma’s reform process, the chairman called on all of the nation’s ethnic rebel groups to choose their own future by asserting their political rights. Saying ethnic armed groups had been “fighting for a long time for our rights” against an “oppressive” Burmese government, Aung Myint said the goal of the Panghsang summit was “to produce one peace paper agreement.”

“There will be disagreement from our discussion, but let us keep tolerance and seek agreement,” Aung Myint said.

The Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), Arakan Army and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) have all clashed with the government in recent weeks, with fighting in northeast Burma some of the deadliest in years. In February, the government said Wa rebels and “Chinese mercenaries” were among those backing MNDAA insurgents in the Kokang Special Region.

Against this backdrop, the government and the NCCT came to a tentative agreement on a nationwide ceasefire accord on March 30, with ethnic representatives pledging to convene a meeting to discuss the deal before committing to a final accord. Following the agreement, the UWSA—which skipped the talks, citing in part the government’s accusation of Wa involvement in the Kokang conflict—invited ethnic leaders to its Panghsang headquarters to discuss its terms.

The summit began on Friday and is expected to run through May 6.

Twelve ethnic armed groups joined the meeting on Friday, with many key leaders of Burma’s biggest ethnic armies attending. About 50 ethnic leaders have traveled to Panghsang, many of whom serve as chairmen or deputy chairmen of their respective ethnic armed groups and will be key voices in the debate over whether to sign the nationwide ceasefire accord.

Representatives of the dozen ethnic groups began arriving a day earlier, checking in to hotels where a tightened security presence awaited.

At a press conference on Thursday, San Khun from the UWSA’s Foreign Department said the Wa rebels had only invited eight media outlets to the conference, citing concerns about the ability of many news organizations to report in an unbiased manner. He added, however, that the cost of opening the conference up to all press would have been prohibitive.

Asked by The Irrawaddy if reports were true that the UWSA had acquired shoulder-fired surface-to-air rockets capable of repelling an aerial assault, he told assembled media not to ask about military-related issues at the conference. He added that journalists were not to attempt to visit the UWSA’s military installations.

He did not directly respond to The Irrawaddy’s question, offering no explicit rejection of the reports’ veracity. Details on the powerful Wa army’s arsenal have always been difficult to ascertain, but the group is believed to possess sophisticated Chinese-supplied weaponry, with reports that it has purchased a “large number” of anti-aircraft hardware, helicopter gunships and—rather inexplicably, given the land-locked geography of the Wa region—a submarine.

San Khun told journalists that he would be happy to instead field questions about the economic development that the autonomous region has seen since the signing of a ceasefire with the government more than 25 years ago.

Situated on the Sino-Burmese border, Panghsang is a former headquarters of the Burma Communist Party (CPB). The UWSA was founded in the Wa Special Region, home to about 600,000 people, out of the ashes of the now-defunct CPB.

Ending India’s Agrarian Nightmare

Roughly 600 million Indians are farmers -- the majority of whom would happily give it up for another job. So why is the Congress party so determined to keep them as peasants?

BY RUPA SUBRAMANYA-APRIL 30, 2015

In 1991, the Congress-led government of Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao passed a series of groundbreaking reforms that unshackled the economy from its tight state controls, transforming it into a market-oriented, globalized giant. Those reforms unleashed India’s growth miracle and lifted millions of people out of poverty.

Today, India once again finds itself at a crossroads as its political left and right go to war over the country’s future. Hanging in the balance is the fate of its farmers and rural poor.

Although the reforms of 24 years ago liberalized the market for products and services, casting off the excesses of an industrial licensing system that required a government permit to do virtually anything associated with business or trade, they left untouched the markets for factors of production: land, labor, and capital. That led to a lopsided pattern of development that focused growth on high-tech industry and services and largely bypassed India’s large pool of unskilled labor, most of whose members were still working the land. After 10 years of a left-of-center, Congress-led government that consistently shelved reforms in favor of large entitlement-based welfare schemes, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s right-of-center Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government is finally attempting them.

Of the three factors of production, land market reform has proved the most controversial. It is also the reform on which the BJP has expended the most political capital. Until 2013, land acquisition was governed by a colonial-era law dating back to 1894 that essentially allowed the government to expropriate any land it wanted without receiving consent from those whose land was acquired, paying them little or no compensation in the process — a nasty form of eminent domain. In the long period after independence when India was largely under the rule of the Congress party, this law was used and misusedextensively. The government often acquired land from farmers on the cheap and turned it over to crony capitalists, with politicians and their friends reaping the benefits.

Many agreed that the colonial-era law needed to be reformed, a task the government finally undertook in 2013. But the Congress-led government tilted to the other extreme, enacting a law so stringent that it became nearly impossible for the government to acquire land for infrastructure, defense, or other public purposes. This is because the reform was crafted by the left-of-center social activists and academics who constituted Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council.

The Modi government recognized that this law would stifle its development agenda and needed to be changed. In late 2014, his government introduced an amendment that would exempt certain key areas, such as infrastructure and defense, from the onerous, time-consuming, and costly consent and social-assessment requirements of the 2013 law. But the government didn’t have the numbers in the upper house of Parliament, forcing Modi to use his executive power to push the law through as an ordinance in December 2014 after the parliamentary session concluded. The ordinance, which has a term of six months, was renewed in April and is once again expected to be brought before Parliament for approval later this session.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. For the Modi government, backing down would be nothing short of a disaster, signaling that it doesn’t have the stomach for a fight, despite sailing to victory last year on a massive mandate for development. For India’s political left, it’s an existential moment, as it tries to reassert its relevance by claiming that the government’s land reform is anti-farmer and anti-poor. Leading the charge is the Congress party, which, since losing badly last year, haslurched even further to the left, portraying itself as the champion of the poor and attempting to cast the Modi government as in the pocket of big business.

Joining the political left are a motley group of far-left communist parties whose vote shares have shrunk drastically over the years and that are trying to stave off political extinction by beating the drum that the Modi government is working in the interests of large corporations rather than ordinary people. It’s ironic that while the Chinese Communist Party has ditched the ideology of Marx, Lenin, and Mao, preserving only its political control, Indian leftists continue to oppose economic reforms that have lifted millions out of poverty, a goal they should presumably share.

The left-of-center coalition allied against the government’s land reform includes the populist, far-left, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which swept to power in Delhi’s Legislative Assembly election this year and whose leader, Arvind Kejriwal, has theatrically and provocatively referred to himself as ananarchist. At an April 22 rally organized by the AAP against the land bill, Gajendra Singh, an individual the party originally claimed was a farmer, allegedly hanged himself in plain view of Kejriwal, who has claimed the alleged suicide was an act of protest against the land bill. The actual circumstances of Singh’s death — even whether he was actually a distressed farmer — are in dispute and currently under police investigation. Thelatest reports from the Delhi police claim that AAP volunteers goaded on Singh, leading to his accidental suicide.

But none of the murkiness surrounding Singh’s death has stopped the bill’sopponents from prematurely linking the tragedy to the government’s land reform. In their campaign against the land bill, they have also attempted to invoke well-known, long-standing problems in the agricultural sector, such as the suicide of debt-laden farmers and crop failures owing to droughts or unseasonal rains. (In fact, official data shows that farmer suicides as a percentage of total suicides hovered around 15 to 16 percent for about a decade, before dropping to their current level of 8.7 percent,a percentage far below farmers’ share of the total population.)

Ironically, it is the very unviability of small-scale farming that is the best argument in favor of the government’s bill. To improve their lives, farmers need a way out of agriculture and into the manufacturing or services sector. In fact, polls show that most small-scale farmers would happily sell their land, if only they could.

A survey of some 5,350 farmers across country conducted in late 2013 and early 2014 by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, a nonpartisan Delhi-based think tank, suggests a dubious future for Indian agriculture. Twenty eight percent of those surveyed said they did not like being farmers. But of the 72 percent who said they did, fully 60 percent claimed they were farmers only because it was a traditional occupation, while only 10 percent said that farming actually led to a good livelihood. Sixty two percent of the respondents said they would give up farming if they could find a better alternative in the city. And tellingly, a whopping 76 percent of farmers’ children said they would like to get out of farming. India’s farmers, present and future, feel trapped.

Another key statistic: Nearly half of India’s population works in agriculture, but produces only 14 to 18 percent of India’s GDP. By comparison, in advanced economies like the United States, farmers constitute around 1 to 2 percent of the workforce and represent an approximately equal share of GDP. Indian agriculture is highly unproductive and inefficient. Indeed, data showsthat the 65 percent of farm households that own less than one hectare of land cannot break even, sending them spiraling into debt. They’re only kept afloat by government schemes that funnel money to them and by periodic waivers of farm loans.

The only people who seem to want beleaguered farmers to be shackled to an unproductive lifestyle are the ideologues of the left. Their ideology is politically useful for the Congress and other parties struggling to remain relevant. It’s noteworthy that Rahul Gandhi, Congress vice president and fifth-generation political dynast, has held rallies attacking the land bill and drawing a spurious — though, for some, emotionally stirring — connection with agrarian issues. But he has failed to critique the unglamorous and very real problems impacting farmers, such their lack of awareness of crop insurance and the imperfect rollout of bank accounts needed to receive compensation payments. The more basic point is that Gandhi’s approach essentially freezes farming and farmers as a static identity, forcing them into a lifelong vocation rather than an activity they might or might not choose, depending on the economic incentives.

While populist Indian politicians are trying to turn private enterprise into a dirty word among the intelligentsia, the poor have no such ideological hang-ups. In the 2014 general election, they came out in droves to vote for Modi’s pro-development, pro-growth agenda. They are seeking better opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship, and Modi’s reform agenda is a crucial first step.

If Modi blinks first, it’ll be a huge defeat not just for him and his party, but for the prospects of real economic opportunity for millions of farmers seeking to be liberated from living on the land. And with that, India can also bid farewell to Modi’s dream of turning India into a manufacturing powerhouse and offering gainful employment to the 13 million new workers who’ll be coming on stream every year — for years to come.

Photo credit: Chandan Khanna / AFP

5 Vaccines To Never Give A Child

February 20, 2013 by DAVE MIHALOVIC

All vaccines should be avoided, but for those on the fence and still deciding whether to vaccinate your child, please review the following information on these 5 vaccines before blindly following the advice of any medical doctor. Knowledge is power and when you understand the uselessness of specific vaccines, the decision to vaccinate or not becomes a very easy one.

When it comes to vaccines, there are three levels of understanding: 1) The first group understands that all vaccines are useless; 2) The second group is still partially affected by medical propaganda from the last century and insists there are at least some "good" vaccines; and 3) The last group has a total blind loyalty to what has been erroneously declared as "vaccine science" and will defend all vaccines regardless of any resources or evidence that presents the contrary.

5 Vaccines to Never Give a Child by Thavam Ratna